Jim is only sixteen, but he’s got a lot going on in his life already. When the news that his pilot father is reported missing in action, and that a war has finally broken out between Terrans and Sar-daks disrupt the quiet hot summer of Derrick Creek, Jim decides it’s time for him to take action. When the adults volunteer to fight for their

country, Jim comes up with a plan to enlist despite his young age. But that’s only the beginning of his space adventure. Jim doesn’t even imagine the epic journey in store for him, and what a terrible curse a soldier’s duty can be. But he’ll learn along the way. It’s a military space opera of about 150,000 words.

Uncatchable: A Space Adventure

PROLOGUE

The Electromagnetic Anomaly

The constant drone of the Virulent Mk-II had been ringing in Captain Streamer’s ears for almost twenty-four hours. He hated the soothing effect that noise had on his nervous system and fought against the torpor to stay awake; drowsiness was a sneaky enemy for a pilot—yielding to it could mean his undoing. He took a sip of water from the canteen next to his seat and drew a deep breath. This would chase away the ever-lingering spell of sleep for a little more.

Again, Captain Streamer stared at the black emptiness of space, trying to make out the electromagnetic anomaly he’d been sent to find, but he saw nothing—just billions of stars with nothing in between. That region of space was a long way from Earth, the longest a human had ever traveled; the Virulent Mk-II set a new record with every click it made. Even if Captain Streamer was used to long missions, this was the first time he had pushed himself so far from any support ship. If there was a mechanical breakdown, he would be on his own. If there was a failure in the life-support module, he would die out there. It was that simple. He could count on his decennial experience as a pilot of the Terran Fleet, on a nit-picky preparation of the mission, and on his trusted comrades. As for the rest… well, he was in God’s hands.

Captain Streamer looked out his cockpit at the three silvery dots moving along with him—his squadron followed in tight formation.

To his right was Lieutenant Dieter Halvorson, a hulking Danish bloke with blond hair and the finest brain in the whole fleet. Other than being an excellent pilot, he was the appointed avionics and communications expert for the mission. He’d cut his teeth upgrading the software on the old Fennec A-71 to make it compliant with the new standards of the latest ships of the fleet, and he knew how to deal with computer tantrums.

To the captain’s left was Sub-lieutenant Thomas Morris. A Galway Irishman, he was brawny, surly, and quick-tempered. You wouldn’t want to be anywhere nearby him in a bar, because trouble would follow him. But on a fighter? Well, that was a different thing. Morris knew most weapon systems by heart and could rig or defuse a bomb in thirty seconds. That made him a valuable member of the mission.

Lieutenant Benjamin Daniels brought up the rear. Born a Kentucky farmer, he’d spent the better part of his youth sticking his nose in the night air, at the stars he loved, when he realized he wanted to build spaceships’ engines instead of tilling soil. A nuclear engineer and a pilot, he had enlisted in the space program, moving from project to project until he’d landed a job to design and test the engine system for the Virulent Mk-II.

Halvorson, Morris, and Daniels were the best pilots Captain Streamer knew. He had handpicked them for the mission, and they had accepted gladly.

The radio crackled. “The more I look out there,” Morris said, “the less I see. My scopes are dead. I wonder if Fleet Command gave us the right coordinates, after all.”

“I feel your frustration, Morris,” Halvorson’s cavernous voice said. “The eggheads back home should know better than to trust hearsay. This thing we’re supposed to find, this anomaly, is too good to be true—it’s impossible it exists. If it did, we could kiss these jalopies good-bye.”

The existence of a massive electromagnetic anomaly in that remote region of space was a guess of the military intelligence, based on the data mined in the last twenty years from the remains of the alien battleship Kematian left at Congara. The intelligence believed the aliens had access to a vast network of electromagnetic anomalies which allowed them to travel from one point of the galaxy to the other within minutes. If such a network existed, the benefit of securing it would’ve been enormous. But nobody had found it yet. The speculations may be wrong, and this could be a wild-goose chase. If the squadron didn’t find anything in the next six hours, their orders were to return to the Summer Harvest.

Captain Streamer stifled a yawn, when the long-range radar in front of him beeped frantically.

Captain Streamer kept his eyes glued on the red dot tearing through the radar display, headed toward them—and was overcome with the sudden realization of impending danger. “Everybody split!” he shouted.

He reached out for the Virulent Mk-II’s control wheel and pushed hard, at the same time pulling the thrust handle all the way back. The fighter jerked to life. The dull noise of its hydrogen engines climbed to an earsplitting howl inside the cockpit as they overpowered. On the radar, the four silvery dots fanned out, away from the incoming object, which changed its course accordingly, moving in on the fighter farther behind. “It’s on you, Daniels!” Captain Streamer said.

“I can’t shake it off! I can’t—”

In Streamer’s windshield, Daniel’s fighter went off with a small flare. “Daniels? Daniels!” Streamer called, but nobody answered him. He saw the familiar dot that had been the lieutenant’s fighter disappear from the radar. At the same time, the red dot made a wide loop.

A great calm descended on Captain Streamer as he focused on his enemy. He felt like being swept twenty years back in time, when he’d first received his baptism of fire—at Congara. “Use your plasma guns,” he said. “Let’s force him into a corridor. Set your torpedoes to blast off at one click, around and at the end of the corridor!”

“Aye, Captain!” Morris said.

“Switching over to plasma guns!” Halvorson said.

Captain Streamer pulled the control wheel toward him until the Virulent Mk-II headed back and then rolled to the side, facing the unknown enemy. “Here he comes,” he said. “Open fire!”

The three pilots pelted the point where the enemy was with rounds, unable to see it with their eyes, using their radar for guidance—the plasma lit up in a spiraling tunnel, trapping for a moment something darker than the darkness surrounding it.

“Torpedoes away!” Captain Streamer shouted.

The torpedoes shot out from the Terran fighters, traced a feeble wake of gold, and then exploded in a firework of engulfing fire at the end of the plasma tunnel.

Never before had the three pilots dealt with so fast an enemy. Morris kept shooting, but the obsidian ship evaded easily. It passed so close to the sub-lieutenant’s fighter it almost collided with it, then speared it with one bright shot—the Terran fighter went up in a ball of fire. The black ship inverted its course once again, this time making for Halvorson.

“Dive, Halvorson! Dive-dive-dive!” Captain Streamer shouted. He joined Halvorson at targeting the enemy ship, and they depleted their ammo on it, but the black ship emerged from the blast untouched. It shot a deadly dart at Halvorson—his fighter blew up.

Feeling the cold sweat trickle down his forehead, Captain Streamer pushed the control wheel all the way forward, trying to crash into the enemy—they sped into each other, but the black ship rocked just enough to move out of his way. It fired back, catching the left wing of the Virulent Mk-II, shredding it to pieces.

The fighter spun out of control, disappearing in the endless stretch of darkness.

The control panel in front of him blaring with hull-breach and failure alarms, Captain Streamer fought with the control wheel to level the Virulent Mk-II, but there was nothing he could do. He checked the long-range radar for hints on the whereabouts of the enemy ship, but it was gone—its pilot knew that the Terran fighter was done for. Streamer heard the hiss of the oxygen draining through the fissured hull. His eyes blurring, he took one last glance at the radar… and was amazed at seeing something on it. Something small and steady, smaller than a planet—a moon, maybe. Feeling his strength desert him, he nudged the control wheel toward it.

The computer performed a spectrographic analysis of the celestial body and rattled off a stream of data: even if the moon was a desert, it was surrounded by a thin atmosphere that made it suitable for life. The irony, Captain Streamer thought. What was the chance of finding a habitable moon in that godforsaken region of space—one in a billion? Well, he had found it. The irony was that despite his unbelievable luck, he would crash on it.

He steered the Virulent Mk-II past the outer layers of the moon—they went by in a blur, exposing the hot and quickly approaching surface. Seeing the rises and the dips sweep past the fighter’s hull, Captain Streamer pulled the control wheel to himself, squeezing the last ounce of thrust from the wheezing engines in a final nose-up. As he skipped over the dunes and rolled along them, his helmet slamming like a punch ball, a dreadful thought came over him—that he would never again see his beloved wife and his adolescent son. Not this time. Not this far.

Only a few hours had passed from the impact.

Captain Streamer opened his eyes to a blinding brightness and to absolute silence. His aching body lay in the sand, some yards away from the totaled Virulent Mk-II. He propped himself on his arm, and discovered that he couldn’t move his legs. He removed his helmet and threw it away, feeling half of his face swell and bleed from a deep gash. He was happy and sad at the same time; happy to be still alive, and sad because he would soon die. He closed his eyes under the scorching sun, waiting for Death to ease him from pain.

Half an hour later he was still alive, hanging to life by a thread. He opened only one eye; the other was a lump of blood and flesh. He wondered if Death had lost its way, when he saw the stranger. He came closer and loomed over him. Every inch of his body was covered—even his face was concealed inside a hood.

If that was Death, it didn’t look very intimidating, Captain Streamer thought, when a revolting gurgle interrupted him. He looked to his left to see a squat and black salamander, five feet tall and twenty feet long, including its ridged tail. Her red tongue flicked in and out her mouth, sensing him like a snake would. Captain Streamer grimaced. “I’m raving already…”

The stranger glanced with suspicion at the smoldering heap of metal that had been the Virulent Mk-II, but ultimately decided that whatever the threat it had posed it was now gone. The stranger climbed from his ride. Keeping his face shielded from the heat of the sun, he drew closer to the man fallen from the sky. He prodded his stick at the captain’s ripped spacesuit, then spoke in a raspy and cackling voice. “Ka kud karrak, einee? Ka kud?” he said.

Captain Streamer jerked upright. He lunged for the cloak wrapped around the stranger and bared his face. The captain studied the black, wide eyes of the alien, happy to see he was real. He wasn’t Death, he wasn’t a ghost, and this wasn’t a dream, after all. “Water…” he croaked.

The bluish alien stood looking at him. He shook his head and shrugged, incapable of understanding. “Wattar? Eh anbar nee, einee.”

“I need water…” the captain said.

“Eh anbar nee, einee—wattar,” the alien repeated.

Captain Streamer rolled his eyes and grumbled. “Man, I really hope the delegation is doing better than this…” he said. In the last sparkle of consciousness, depleted of energies, he eased his head on the sand and fainted.

(March 26, 1931 – February 27, 2015)

“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had,but not preserved, except in memory.”

Live long and prosper.

Leonard Nimoy

In Figment, Police Lieutenant Evander Rainer, at a loss for clues on a murder case, resorts to a bride, a telepathic individual who will scan four major suspects to unravel the tangle for him. Alas, as a virus attacks the mind of the

bride, and Rainer begins to recall things which aren’t his own, he realizes there is much more at stake than meets the eye, and redoubles his efforts to find and deliver the criminal to justice.It’s a novella of about 34,000 words.

Figment

Helpless Theseus lost in the maze of our brain, we seek Ariadne’s thread, but there is none.

I

The emptiness between the table and the ceiling of the flying lounge fluttered with zero-gravity jetsam: a few opaque acetate sheets, an electronic pad and a stylus, and a copy of the Moon Herald. They spiraled in slow motion around each other in a silent dance.

The Herald unfolded its pages, revealing a publicity box from where blue Myosotis arvensis bloomed, next to the beaming face of an old man. The ad read:

Don’t be confused anymore! If your memory is like Swiss cheese, it’s time to try Forget-Me-Not! Restore your memory in one easy step! Incremental backups and restores are now available for senior citizens. Forget-Me-Not! Get a free consultation at home! Call us now at 5336-687-5336!

The Herald gradually regained its weight. It softly perched at the foot of a spotless white couch where a man lay, strapped to it, taking a nap.

The speakers of the moving lounge dinged, and a gentle female computer voice spoke.

“We’re scheduled for landing in fifteen minutes.”

The voice repeated the announcement, but it was lost on the dozing man, who just kept dreaming.

Pushed by its blazing rockets, the flying lounge sped across space, passing by thousands of blinking dots of the orbiting private demesnes scattered around Earth. Its destination wasn’t one of the many billions of stars populating the desolate vastness of the beyond, but a far closer and familiar globe—the Moon.

In its slow magnification, Earth’s satellite revealed, amidst its barren and hollowed surface, the outline of a branched-out installation. It wasn’t a mining facility, but plush residential quarters which included verdant gardens rife with trees, basins, manicured lawns and flowerbeds arranged in curlicues among which paths pleasantly unwound. Everything was sheltered under airtight glass domes—it stood out from the gray dust like an elaborate jewel of ivory inlaid with emerald.

The thriving marvel beckoned from the portholes of the flying lounge, but nobody was there to look at it. The one man inside it had awakened at last, but he was more interested in examining the acetate sheets in his hands than contemplating the beauty at the end of the vertiginous chasm of space.

The man featured inquiring eyes, a straight nose, and a slightly angular jaw that gave him authority. He wore clean shoes and a suit that fitted him like a glove; a sartorial creation way too perfect and functional to be but a masterfully crafted uniform.

The man glanced at the clock on the lounge wall and sighed, wondering how much longer he would’ve had to endure the torture of vacuum-traveling. The answer to the unvoiced question came immediately as, with a jolt, the rockets reversed their thrust, slowing down the lounge in its descent toward the landing platform assigned to it.

The door to the decontaminating chamber opened, and the man in the suit emerged from it. He found himself in an aseptic corridor. Orienting himself, he directed his steps toward a desk behind which a torpid clerk sat. Without saying one word, he presented the latter with his identification. The clerk inspected the documents, and motioned the newcomer further down the corridor.

However, the heavy, matronly woman didn’t shake hands with him; she kept them close to the overflowing pearl robe that covered her body. She gave the police lieutenant a narrow once-over, barely concealing her dislike and contempt for all earthly matters.

“We’re always eager to help the Police Department, whenever it needs us,” she lied.

“Is the bride ready?”

Responsible Dahlie tutted condescendingly.

“Yes, our sister is ready. I was wondering, though, if you rather prefer one of our more experienced sisters. You see, this is the first time for Sandra. She has little familiarity with the outside world, and—”

“Sandra will do nicely, thank you.”

Responsible Dahlie groaned heavily.

“Very well. After all, she too has to start somewhere, sooner or later… Before I entrust her in your hands, let me remind you a few things: all sisters in the zenana are special; we don’t introduce them to strangers, not until they are of age—by that time, they can look and fend for themselves. All the same, their first journey to Terra can be overwhelming. I must ask you to never let her in a room with more than three peoples at a time, other than you two. Be considerate about her; her mind is a very sensitive and precious instrument, and as such it must be treated.”

“We’ll be away only a few hours—I promise nothing weird is going to happen to her. I’ll bring her back so quickly you’ll think she’d never left.”

Dahlie pursed her lips like a mother worried for her child. She turned and glanced past the glass separating her from a contiguous waiting room. Rainer peered in the same direction… and was blinded by the sudden flare of the rising sun. He shielded his eyes in marvel at the mighty explosion of celestial glory. Only when the halo receded could he glimpse—the bride.

As if she had been born to the light, her entire body glistened with gold. Her ritual dress was simple—white stripes of cloth dropped from her shoulders, joined at her waist, and again parted, barely concealing her flat belly and her shapely legs, revealing her ankles and her sandaled feet. It was that flimsy, skimpy dress which earned the mind-freaks on the Moon the nickname ofbrides. However, unlike real brides, the ideal party for lunar brides weren’t grooms, but cunning criminals.

“Detective Roy Vagrant died last Sunday morning at 6:00 AM. Someone shot him. Unfortunately, as extensively as we have searched, we couldn’t find any clue about the murderer.”

Both Rainer and the bride were back to the moving lounge, strapped to their couches. The slightest thrum transmitted through the insulating layers of the floor, a sign that the lounge was moving again. The bride had made herself comfortable on her couch, heedless of her veils floating about alluringly in the zero-gravity. She kept her well-chiseled ankles together, revealing the golden string which bound them. It complemented her figure in such an exquisite way one would never think the peculiar ornament was, in fact, a real chain. Rainer shifted his eyes from the superb handicraft of the chain to the ankles of the bride, to her knees, her legs, her waist and her breasts, up up to her neck—to her bright face. Rainer met deep, hazel eyes tinged with copper, which stared back at him intently.

Rainer felt a vague twinge of embarrassment, but he deliberately ignored it. There was no point of being coy with a bride. Even if she was legally forbidden from reading but the criminals and the suspects exposed to her, when a bride was out of the zenana, there was no real way of knowing where her mind would ramble. As far as the limited powers of his intuition suggested him—above-the-average powers, standing to the lieutenant badge he carried, but trivial compared to the bride’s—she already was totally conscious about him; about his hopes, his fears, and his cravings, too. Denying the fact or resisting it would be stupid. He could do better than that; he could pretend nothing of that was happening, and the bride would graciously do the same.

Rainer cleared his throat and went back to rifling through the acetate sheets in his hands. He passed on one which portrayed a burly, square-jawed man in his sixties. The bride reached out and studied it.

“The one camera in Vagrant’s home office recorded continuously from when he entered, at 5:30 AM, to when he died, half an hour later. And then until the next Monday, when his maid found him. Alas, even the camera’s wide angle couldn’t frame the murderer.”

Rainer handed the bride a second acetate sheet. She tapped one of its corners to play a soundless video.

It showed a bargain office furnished with a desk, a bookcase, a clock on a mantelpiece, and blue roses in a vase. A man, clearly Vagrant, sat in his chair, working at some documents. Suddenly, he lifted his head, as if someone else entered the room. Vagrant stood… but he didn’t look surprised at seeing his murderer—did he know him already? Vagrant approached the off-frame visitor… when an intense light flashed, hitting Vagrant square in the chest, causing him to keel over on the floor, where he lay motionless.

The sheet of acetate played the idle image of the deceased for a minute or so, until the bride stroked its corner to fast-forward the video: the sunlight coming in from a window behind the desk faded rapidly into the evening, and then into the night. Dawn chased away the night in a circle, and the sunlight bathed the office once again. It was exactly then when Vagrant’s maid came in. Shocked at seeing her employer on the floor, she knelt, shaking him for a sign that he was alive, understanding from his cold body that he was long dead.

The acetate sheet became opaque again.

“Neither the investigation, nor the team of forensics could provide enough evidence to identify beyond any reasonable doubt the murderer. Still, we have tracked down four possible suspects; I’ll present them to you shortly—I’m sure the killer is one of them. Just tell me who he is, and your job on Earth will be over.”

The bride stared at Rainer, then went back looking at the video without saying a word.

Rainer’s service car pulled to the curb. It wasn’t the tall building of Blue Haven’s police station which rose in front of him and his guest, but a pleasant stretch of grass, trees, paths, basins, and a meandering canal.

“The city park is not the zenana gardens, but I hope you will appreciate it all the same,” Rainer said.

He and the bride stared at the park, which was just then being stormed by workers and students either out for lunch or lesson break. A lot of families would take advantage of the midday pause to reunite, too; so while adults ate, chattered, and relaxed, their children would momentarily run about and play a little.

Rainer leaned onto the car dashboard, and was lost for a moment in the plain beauty of the scene.

“Let’s take a walk,” he told the bride.

“I thought Responsible Dahlie stated that I mustn’t see more than three people at once.”

It was an assessment rather than a remark, for even the bride seemed to be soothed by the sight.

“This isn’t a sightseeing tour of Blue Haven, and I’m not your guide. I want you to test and calibrate your reads on common people before you meet the suspects. Since this is your first journey to Earth, I don’t want you to make mistakes—mixing up strong emotions and facts; taking the not uncommon desire to kill someone for the real thing. Let’s have a walk. As we proceed, read as many people as you can. This will give you a nice idea of how real people’s brain work in this town.”

They got out of the car. Rainer moved around to the rear hood, then opened it to retrieve a folded sweater. He gave it to Sandra.

“People better don’t know who you really are. Also, even if this walk is standard practice, it’s still illegal.”

Sandra unfolded the sweater and put it on… when she registered the faintest smell; a nice smell—that of perfume. A delicate scent of flowers she hadn’t picked up before on Rainer—that cloth didn’t belong to him, but to a woman.

Sandra looked at her bound feet.

“Right you are,” Rainer said.

He removed a tiny key from his pocket, kneeled and undid the chain around the bride’s ankles. He handed it over to her, and she deftly draped it around her wrist in a fashionable bracelet.

“Can we go, now?” he insisted.

Rainer and Sandra walked down the graveled paths, meeting as many pedestrians as they could. Each time, the bride would close her eyes, take a deep breath, and get a glimpse of the different minds.

“How’s it going?”

“I trained for ages to tell memories about emotions from memories about facts. This promenade, however pleasurable, is perfectly pointless.”

Rainer ignored Sandra.

“Look, Frank’s cart. Frank’s are the best sherbets in the world. Let’s don’t miss them!”

Sandra lifted her eyebrows and rolled her eyes, but she didn’t have the heart to resist the lieutenant as he took her hand and pulled her along toward the cart.

Rainer nodded at Frank, an old man with a leathery, tanned face covered in wrinkles. He looked like an old salt in his tub—he was a bit, standing at the helm of his pushcart. He smiled at seeing Rainer, then bowed in surprise at the woman in his company.

“And who would this flower be, Rainer?”

“She’s Sandra. She’s just a coworker.”

“Well, maybe it’s time I get another job, too.”

He winked at the bride, and she smiled back.

“How’s it going?” Frank asked Rainer.

“Same old, old man. Same old.”

“Well, what will you have?”

“Raspberry,” Rainer said, then he turned to Sandra. “What about you?”

The bride didn’t say anything.

“C’mon, it’s your first time on Earth, after all, huh? Let go of yourself—take it easy. It’s on the house.”

Frank waited patiently with his scoop in his hand.

“Oh, well. I’ll have… lemon and—licorice,” she said.

Beaming, Rainer paid, snatched the two ice creams, and gave Sandra hers.

“Have a nice day,” he told Frank.

“You too, guys. You too.”

Rainer and Sandra left, resuming their promenade, enjoying their treats a little at a time.

“I should’ve said peach, huh?” Sandra said.

She stopped, and Rainer glanced at her, oblivious.

“I’m not your Christine, Lieutenant Rainer; I’m not here to remind you of your bemoaned wife. I’m here to deliver a criminal to the justice…”

Once again, the words of the bride sounded more like a plain assessment than a cutting remark.

Rainer nodded his head and exhaled.

“Of course. We better go, then.”

Four one-way mirrors hung along a dark corridor, giving onto four tight rooms, each containing a table and a chair. Rainer and the bride, unseen, moved to the first window. Beyond it, a woman stood, nervously rubbing her hands. Her hair was unkempt, and she had big, black purses under her eyes, a sign that something tormented her. Was it remorse? Pain? Guilt, maybe? Only thebride would tell.

“Vagrant’s maid, Margo Price, fifty-two. She’s been working at his dependencies for about ten years now; she could’ve held some grudge against Vagrant. We have tested her retina for laser-gun radiation damage, but we got a negative—the laser might be shielded, or maybe she wore sunglasses. Well, she’s all yours.”

The bride closed her eyes, and focused on the maid for a moment, expanding her senses. Then she looked up again.

“Who’s next?” she asked.

Rainer frowned, impressed by the unusual speed at which the bride had obtained her first response. He made way to the next mirror.

In the second room a man broodingly sat, curled on himself, spewing curses under his breath, and shooting occasional side glances at the mirror.

“Jeremy Maddens, sixty. He’s a chief accountant at the revenue service agency of Blue Haven. He hired Roy Vagrant to look into his daughter’s alleged suicide. About a month ago, Joan Maddens was found dead in her apartment at Bright Oaks. The medical examiner ascertained that she died from an overdose of Excedril, a highly performing drug that hit the market of late. Jeremy Maddens stirred a controversy with the police, accusing us of doing nothing against the pushers and the suppliers that infest Blue Haven, and of covering up the big shots of the city that sucked his Joan into a deadly spiral of vice. But the police archived the case as suicide, and that was it. That’s why Maddens turned to Vagrant; in the hope that he would find who was responsible for his daughter’s death, and deliver him to justice. Maybe he wasn’t happy with Vagrant’s job, he flipped out, and he killed him. You tell me.”

Rainer stepped aside for the bride to scan Maddens, which she did. This time, however, it took her longer. Rainer realized that Maddens’s murderous instincts must be exceptionally strong—did Sandra find the man they were looking for already?

When the bride looked up, Rainer didn’t ask her what she’d just seen in Maddens’s mind, but moved to the third one-way mirror. In the adjacent room, a well-dressed man sat composed, with his fingers woven together, looking at them. He was either contemplating his reflection in the mirror, or trying to pierce the glass and see through it.

“Maynard Alders, a rich lawyer of sixty. According to a lot of rumors I’ve been able to pick up, he’s a drug-addict. Allegedly, it was him who first introduced Joan to the plush environment of Blue Haven, including its vices. Joan started doing heavier and heavier drugs, until she was never able to recover again anymore. Despite her father’s attempts at pulling her out from that perverse world, he couldn’t save her—she always wanted to go back to her deadly golden cage. When she eventually died from it, Maddens swore to himself he would have exposed all those who had to do with her demise. Alders was one of those. Maybe Vagrant was about to tell the world what depraved vermin Alders was. Maybe he didn’t have the chance. Maybe Alders reached out first and killed Vagrant before he did.”

The bride glanced into the mirror, then closed her eyes, reading all about Alders and his lust. When she opened them again, her face had lost part of its color, and Rainer knew what a horrible job a bride’s must be.

“Sandra? Are you fine? Do you need a break?”

The bride shook her head. “I’m fine.”

Rainer motioned her to the last mirror, inside which an unsavory, arrogant young man slumped. A freshly broken nose and a jester sneer marred his otherwise comely features. He donned an exceptionally beautiful and expensive suit, but it was badly in need of cleaning and pressing. The fool propped his handmade shoes on the table, idly in wait, nibbling at his filthy nails.

Art.Hu.R. is an artificial person appointed with the task of keeping ship-shape a huge spaceship on her thousand-year journey to a planet on the other side of the universe. Little does he know that major setbacks will soon put him in charge of everything, and that

he’ll have to fight against impossible odds to get the half a million unaware passengers stuck in a frozen sleep onboard safe and sound to their destination.It’s a novella of about 27,000 words.Enjoy!

Art.Hu.R.

I

The little girl put on her pink sneakers, deftly tied them up, then reached out for the battered skateboard tucked away in the nook of the apartment entrance. As soon as she pulled open the heavy ceramic door, a waft of hot air came in, like dragon’s breath, mussing her hair and drying her nose. The torrid gust flooded the apartment, poking into the rooms, alerting someone bustling about in the kitchen.

“Lucy? Is that you?” a worried voice wondered.

“I’m going out with the skate.”

“We’ll be leaving in two hours. I don’t want to have to scrub you all over, so mind you be right back.”

“All right, Mommy, I’ll be just outside the door.”

Lucy swept out and shut the ceramic slab after her.

She found herself in a hot and dusty street leading to the main square at the bottom of Hole 44, one of the many thousand-feet-deep wells mankind had dug in the plain to protect itself from the scorching heat of an expanding sun. The once lush prairie stretching as far as the eye could see had turned into an arid desert of crumbling rock and sand; the life which had infested it had crawled into the holes, wearing on in the cooler night which had become everybody’s day.

At five in the morning, dawn brightened the sky already. Soon, the sun would rise and cook everything in an unbearable heat, and Lucy would have to go back to the thick shell she lived in—until then, she possibly had about a quarter of an hour all to herself.

Lucy put down her skate, set her right foot on the board, then, with a couple of pushes, there she was, off and running down the sidewalk.

She glanced at the familiar shells that had been her friends’ abodes as she passed them. One by one, Beth, Maggie, Paula and the others had left. Milo had gone only two days before. Lucy too was going, with her mother. They were the chosen ones, the lucky ones who would’ve abandoned forever the sweltering pebble Earth had become.

Lucy loved skating; in fact, when she glided parallel to the street with her arms spread out, she always felt like flying. Even if she had never been on an airplane, she could pretend she wasn’t in the Hole anymore, but up there, in the air, like some bird of times past.

She lifted her head and peered at the satellite clouds stuck high above in the otherwise empty sky, in the monotonous repetition of the same-old interlocking hexagonal module. Lucy had seen the fluffy clouds made of vapor in the videos at school, of course. Even so, she had a hard time believing they could take every shape they fancied—from dragons, to rabbits, to cats, to elephants, before they changed again.

She had also seen footage of the crops and prairies which had once covered the plain; of the trees and the horses; of the endless stretches of water called oceans, where enormous animals swam, some as big as houses. But she had never seen all that in person; it was gone already long before she was born—how could she ever miss it? However, the ever-changing clouds were a whole other matter; she was so curious about them!

They were like… magic.

Milo told her where they were going the sky would be thick with clouds. They would bring in storms, and rains so thick one would literally drench in water—how crazy and weird was that, drench in water in the open?

Lucy’s train of thought broke off suddenly when the front wheels of the skateboard caught a crack in the sidewalk, projecting her hard on the concrete floor.

“Ouch!” she cried, holding her scratched knee.

She glanced at the exposed layers of her skin as tiny droplets of blood began seeping through.

“Darn, it hurts!”

“You bet it hurts!” a voice behind her cried. “That’s how your body reminds you to be more careful!”

Lucy looked up and saw a man in a green overall; he had a strange, eternal smile on his face, as if he found the world amusing. He leaned over, inspecting Lucy’s knee, revealing the name embroidered on his bib:

The man retrieved a first-aid kit from his pocket, opened it, and took out a sterile gauze. He cleaned Lucy’s knee, sprayed some antiseptic on the wound, waited for it to dry up, then put a bandage on it.

“There,” Arthur said. “Give it a couple of days and you’ll be as good as new.”

“Who are you, some environmental operator?”

“Nah. I’m just a repairman.”

“Well, you repaired me…”

“Yeah, it seems so,” Arthur said, loving the sound of it, his face brightening genially. “You better go home, now. You don’t want to be out when the sun rises.”

He helped Lucy to her feet, picked up her skate and gave it to her. He followed her with his eyes as she limped back to her shell and disappeared inside it.

Arthur smiled, proud of accomplishing a good deed that early in the morning, then warily glanced at the still sky, expecting to see the disc of the sun appear any moment now. He crossed the main square and walked toward one of the largest buildings facing it.

“The Susan Constant will leave tonight at 0:00 AM,” General Moore said. “It’s going to take off from Moon base, carrying its human burden in the longest, most daring and dangerous journey man’s ever made.”

Moore, a square man with short, graying hair, spoke with the grave voice reserved for momentous events, addressing the selected audience in front of him.

“A new era opens for mankind. This very night, the first stage of a project started eighty years ago will come to completion. Thanks to the joined efforts of us all, half a million people will have the chance to leave a dying sun and system, to start over again on a fresh new planet which will become our second homeland. Sure, we’ll take nearly a thousand years to cover the four-point-three light years which separate us from Ermitara; but with the innovative technology in our hands, reaching it will feel like a minute-long trip—”

General Moore stopped talking as the double doors in the back of the meeting room opened and someone in a green overall came in. The whole assembly turned in wonder as well.

“I—I apologize, I didn’t mean to intrude,” Arthur said. “I’m due for a job interview, but it looks like they pointed me to the wrong room. Just ignore me and go on with your, huh… oration.”

“Come forth, Arthur,” the general bid.

“Do you know me, sir?”

“Everybody knows you, here, Arthur.”

Arthur thought they couldn’t possibly know him; he had, in fact, never seen even one of them—who were they? Why would they be expecting him? What for, anyway? Why didn’t anybody tell him? And yet, the big man on the dais seemed quite sure about it.

Arthur stepped forth, drawing along the stares of the bystanders. He moved up the rows, until he arrived in front of General Moore.

“I bet it’s the air conditioning system, isn’t it? Oh, that junk always breaks down. If you told me where the main unit is, I would fix it in no time—I don’t want to vaunt myself, but I’m quite good at that!”

“The job is not here, Arthur. It’s out there,” General Moore said, pointing his forefinger at the ceiling.

“On the roof, sir?”

“Almost. What about keeping in working condition a huge spaceship, for a long, long time?”

“Thank you for your consideration, sir, but I don’t think I qualify to take on something that big. I handle small appliances—I know nothing about spaceships.”

“Yes, indeed. You might not look like it, but your memory contains the complete schematics of every nut and bolt of the Susan Constant. Your duty will be to keep her in shape for the whole length of her journey.”

“And that would be… a couple of months, I guess?”

“More like a thousand years. Yep, you heard right, Arthur. We’re leaving this red-hot bucket for good.”

Arthur scratched the top of his head, evaluating that monster number.

“Sir, I’ll be long dead by then!”

“On the contrary. We spent one fifth of the mission budget to develop and inject you with groundbreaking picotechnologies that will keep you well-alive, young and fit for the required time span. While everybody sleeps away, frozen in their cradles, you’ll be mopping around and cleaning and replacing malfunctioning and worn-out odds and ends of all kinds.”

“You mean I’ll be all by myself? I’ll go crazy, sir!”

“We also designed your mind to maintain maximum control over yourself in every situation—you won’t flip out, Arthur, don’t worry. Anyway, you won’t be alone. The Susan Constant’s mainframe computer will keep you company—you’ll be good friends with Jerry.”

“Jerry, sir?”

Arthur, taken aback more and more with every bit of news, just stood there, totally baffled.

“I don’t know what to say, sir.”

General Moore rolled his eyes at the crowd, causing it to stir with laughter.

“Just tell me if you want the gig!”

“Maybe I should accept your offer, after all, sir. It’s so hard to find a proper job, these days…”

Lucy glanced at the mechanical cradle in front of her, not entirely convinced she should get inside it. The black-metal coolant pipes snaking around it looked less than friendly.

“Are you sure this thing is safe?” she asked.

The female technician standing in front of Lucy and her mother smiled patiently.

“It’s perfectly safe. After you enter the sleeping unit, it will activate, lowering the temperature of your body to the point that it’ll freeze like a snowflake. That way, as if a clock had stopped ticking, your every metabolic process will be paused and you will be able to travel across space without aging. Of course, the process will be reversed on arrival, and you shall wake up again.”

“Sleeping through all that time? It scares me.”

“Shut your eyes and your body will follow. I promise you when you come to again, you’ll think only a few hours have gone by.”

Lucy peered at the weird sleeping suit she had put on, then looked toward the huge hall of the cryogenic chamber, thick as it was with egg-looking cradles.

Finally won over, Lucy climbed into the machine. The technician worked deftly, stroking the controls on the side of the cradle, starting the hibernating process.

Lucy yawned. “Mom? I feel drowsy…”

“Sleep then, my child.”

“Hold my hand?”

Lucy’s mother reached out for her daughter’s little hand and held it in hers. As Lucy fell unconscious, her fingers gradually lost their warmth, until they became icy. With a worried sigh, Lucy’s mother kissed her on her forehead, then stepped back and watched the lid above the cradle shut on the child, delivering her to the stillness of the millenary sleep.

“She’ll be fine there,” the technician reassured the woman, and pointed her to the next freezing unit.

A bit unwillingly, Lucy’s mother lowered herself in it and lay back—in moments, she too fell asleep. As the second lid fell into place, the technician moved down the suspended catwalk, meeting more families waiting for their turn to hibernate.

Arthur swabbed the metal deck carefully, humming to himself. Since he had climbed aboard the Susan Constant, nobody had paid attention to him; they were all too taken up with the final preparations before takeoff, so he had grabbed the first mop he could put his hands on and had kept himself busy that way.

General Moore told him his mind was designed for a balanced behavior; all the same, he couldn’t deny he was… restless. He stopped swabbing and approached a large porthole past which space could be seen.

He glimpsed, in the darkness and relative coolness of Moon’s shadow, the scaffolding where the Susan Constant had been outlined first, then built, then fitted for the long journey to Ermitara.

A sudden jolt quaked the ship.

Arthur gulped and hung to his mop, wondering if that was it; if the long-awaited for time for takeoff had finally come, realizing it had.

The Susan Constant ignited her rockets, inched out from her scaffolding and majestically paraded in front of the tiny farewell committee launch, dwarfing it with her immense bulwarks. A salvo shot from the launch, christening the departing ship, wishing her a smooth and troubleless journey. The firework flashed along the ship’s hull, brightening Arthur’s awed features, then it dwindled and died out, leaving only the ubiquitous darkness of space.

Arthur, struck by the absolute silence at which the rockets of the ship flared, glanced at the Moon and at the yellowing, scorched Earth as they shrunk away. His thought went to the thousands still hiding in their holes—there wasn’t for them another ship leaving.

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